The NY Times has an Op-Ed piece by the historian David Blight on the origins of "Memorial Day". Some of his own research on the first Memorial Day is presented (it probably will come as a surprise to many people). The article can be read here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/30/opinion/30blight.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=thab1&pagewanted=all
I think that this is a good example of social amnesia, that is, the mass forgetting of an event (e.g., the flu pandemic of 1918) and details about an event (e.g., the origin of Memorial day). A number of factors are involved such as macro-level factors (i.e., social, cultural, political and related factors, including competing narratives and interpretations) and micro-level factors (e.g., agreement or disagreement with a particular interpretation, avoidance of unpleasant or negative events or information, alteration of memories especially with misinformation). With respect to the misinformation effect, it is worth noting the following quote from the Wikipedia entry (yadda-yadda) for it: |In a more recent study, researchers led by Henry Roediger used |this effect in conjunction with the method of the Asch conformity |experiments: two participants were asked to recall information |about a scene, one of whom was a confederate who gave intentionally |inaccurate information. In this case, the "real" subject was likely |to remember seeing things that the confederate had also reported |(but which did not occur). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misinformation_effect The study being referred to is: Roediger, H.L., Meade, M.L. & Bergman, E. (2001). Social contagion of memory. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 8, 365-371. The above article is available at: http://psych.wustl.edu/memory/Roddy%20article%20PDF%27s/Roediger%20Meade%20bergman%202001.pdf It appears that one function of historians is to make sure that historical facts are clear and not in dispute (though interpretations and inferences can be in dispute and be given a relative truth value -- facts should be either true or false though having only partial information may bring this into question). Someone has to keep things straight because too many forget and don't review what they think they know. -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=10783 or send a blank email to leave-10783-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
